Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It helps if I listen to music when I write. My mood should be altered also, that makes an even bigger difference. The humour I make attempts at seems to come by itself as the post progresses. They don’t take very long at all. When I start laughing at what I’ve wrote, I know I am doing well, that’s when I go into overdrive. I think some of the stuff I right is absolutely hilarious but I understand not everyone will. No matter what anyone thinks, I enjoy doing it greatly.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on October 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »
What exactly am I meant to say? I have nothing to say. I don’t want to communicate. I want to be left alone.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I’ve called a 3rd AGM. Another issue has arisen and it deserves it’s own meeting. I shall be holding this AGM on the toilet, like the two before it. The topic for this AGM is ‘I am always sitting naked in bed when I post things on line. Should I be suitably dressed instead, and be sitting on a chair by a desk?’
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Sooner or later we all die. There’s nothing you can do about it and most likely you won’t see it coming. I will die, you will die, we all will die.
I will live on through this site, which is staying where it is.
I will live on through my child, who is well-looked after.
Yes sooner or later you are going to die.
Who will remember me after I’ve gone?
Do I hear a song coming on?
(note to self: Mark, don’t let off farts when I am writing, especially when the topic is a bit morbid. Hold onto the bastards air biscuits and let them off after you’ve finished writing, okay?)
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I may decide to have a second AGM, again on the toilet at some point. The topic for this AGM will be whether I should sue myself or not. I have spent money on establishing my own website and then just messed about with it and mucked things up, whilst I watched so I’m not happy and believe action may need to be taken. Should suing myself and continuing to mess about be handled in the same sentence. It should be a longer AGM and more decisive action should be taken. Lawyers might get involved, it could be fun! Must be on the toilet though.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Hi there readers (and hi to me). I regret to tell you I am in a rather odd mood.
I did want to raise the issue of identity. How do you define the sort of player you’ve become? Which year in your life stands out and why? Who was a big influence and why? How did you develop? What’s happened since then? What type of player are you and how do you know? Has an overload of theory got the better of you?
Today, we are caught up in so many things that we forget the most basic, like what we are. You should be able to define yourself. You should be able to know what you became, how and why? But then modernity asks so much of us that simple things can become lost in the midst of time.
For me, well 1993 was the year I became much more solid as a player and pretty tough to beat. That was the definitive year as far as I am concerned. I’m still pretty solid and that’s how I like to keep it.
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Life Offline: ‘England will always be my home and has a special place in my heart’ although for tax reasons, I will always stay here in the desert and steer clear of Rip-Off Britain the place as much as possible.
Life Online ‘Yes I am British‘ and when surfing the web I do gravitate towards all things British, and chess is no exception.
Life istelf: we do have a our own great forum, which can be found here: https://www.ecforum.org.uk/index.php
In addition to this, the hard work John Saunders is putting into Britbase, really is starting to show. Britbase is a well ordered site listing past results and tournaments. Should you want to look at tournaments in the uk from a bygone era, this is the site for you. It’s well put together and is a treasure trove of info: https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on September 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »
So it’s ten years and counting before I rise up to the challenge (if I live that long). I think my state of mind will be ‘I’m running the club because I want to, and whether or not anyone wants to is another matter’
Says Mark, future club and league president.
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| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
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| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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McCreadyandChess 